SACRO GRA

After the Benares “passeur” in India (Boatman, 1993), the United States and its desert castaways in Below Sea Level (2009, Cinéma du réel Grand Prix) and a Mexican killer (El sicario, 2010), could it be that Gianfranco Rosi is tired of travelling? The answer is a categorical “no”. Although the filmmaker films in his own country, he does so precisely from the angle of voyaging and encountering a form of otherness — by connecting with a motif of displacement: the GRA (Grande Raccordo Anulare), the highway circling Rome. This choice induces the margin rather than the centre in terms of space and characters alike. The outcome of a two-year-long immersion, the film is caught between two contradictory movements: wandering around and immobility — places and people that we follow awhile, then meet again; a botanist, ambulancemen, an academic and his daughter, a modern prince. thanks to Gianfranco Rosi’s exceptional presence, to his qualities of seeing and listening, the prosaic is transfigured into a fairy tale, the individual becomes a world in itself. The circular form resembles a fragile cosmos, where poetry dialogues with politics.

Arnaud Hée